FitBits: Fit Tested, Over Hydrated, Beyond Obsessed

America tests its fitness, eight glasses a day gets debunked, and the overly health obsessed be warned.

That’s an Executive Order
Remember the test you took in elementary school where you had to run a mile and then get in front of the class and try to wiggle and squirm your way up to complete one measly pull-up? Well, those days no longer live only in the past. Say hello to the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports’ Adult Fitness Test. Last week, the group introduced the test’s criteria, which involves a one 1-mile walk or 1.5-mile run to test aerobic fitness; sit-ups or push-ups to test muscular strength and endurance; a sit-and-reach test to measure flexibility;and a body mass index test to assess body composition. After taking the self-test (thankfully, you no longer have to take it while your fifth-period love interest is watching a sweaty, red-faced you try to look cute while eking out that one last sit-up), go online to enter your data and see how you stack up against the rest of America.

For extra hilarity in our workout lives, Erin and I have decided to take the test ourselves soon and blog about the results. So be on the lookout for that—it’s sure to be adoozy.

Hope Floats
Turns out the eight, 8-ounce glasses of water thing isn’t as rigid as we’ve been led to believe. Hallelujah! Now I can stop peeing 30 times a day. And wait, it gets better. Nutrition experts now say that you can, I repeat can, get water from caffeinated sources (coffee, tea, diet soda) and from foods. So, if you can’t down your eight glasses of water daily, chow down on fruits, veggies and sip some soup, and you’re on your way!

Too Much of a Good Thing
Being healthy is good, but going to extremes to be healthy—restricting entire food groups or only eating a select few items—may not be as healthy as you once thought. Turns out being too healthy and rigid with your diet can have unhealthy consequences, namely malnutrition. Oh, the irony. Some experts are now calling this unhealthy obsession to eat healthy food “orthorexia,” although not everyone in the medical community is on board, as the link below discusses.

Comments

That link about health food obsession was really interesting to me because I’ve been hearing a lot lately about studies that actually debunk the idea of “healty” eating–that there are lots of cultures who have very monotone food options, but are very health individuals. It’s also interesting because some of those questions aren’t necessarily fair–some people who are socially conscious chose to be vegan or vegetarian and look down on others who aren’t not because of the healthy food, but because of social inequities, poverty, and global warming. Is it really a sign of a mental illness that we ask others to make food choices that will empower others and help end global food shortage?

I do think, though, that most of the questions are very similar to the sort of issues that people with OCD deal with (being one myself)–if healthy food becomes an obtrusive part of your life, what do you do?